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Posted by Doug Clifford on July 05, 2001 at 02:50:12:
In Reply to: beseler slide duplicator posted by Renee Vollman on July 04, 2001 at 13:58:53:
: I have a Beseler Deluxe Slide Duplicator and I am
encountering a great amount of difficulty duplicating slides,
particularly Kodachrome slides. These slides are of paintings
from museums. I am currently using Kodak Ektachrome slide
duplicating film 5071. I have the duplicator color settings on
145 Y , 100 M, and 100 C.
: I have two questions :
: 1. It seems that the exposure time for this film needs to be
around 1 second. This does not allow me to adjust the duplicator
on 45Y 0M 0C which would minimize the use of filters. Is there
any way to make the light less intense other than using the three
filters at the same time ?
: 2. The slides were produced using several films. Is there any
one who would know the settings I can use for agfachrome, kodak
64 T, 160T, 320T, Ektachrome, Fudji etc…
: Any and all information or advice will be appreciated. Thank
you for your time
: Renee
Having never seen the Beseler slide duplicator (but having done some slide duplicating some years ago) I can only speculate as to some solutions for your questions.
First, I assume a camera and macro lens is attached to the slide duplicator. If this is correct, then you could control the intensity of the illumination through the use of neutral density filters screwed onto the lens of the camera before it is attached to the slide duplicator. Neutral density filters can be purchased from any well-stocked professional camera store. While some people might suggest a dimmer be attached to the illumination, dimming the light would make the light source warmer and would really raise havoc with the color balance. While you could use slower film (which would be the equivalent to reducing the illumination, slower film would require you either (1) open the lens aperture to compensate; this would result in some loss of depth of field which is critical in slide duplicating. (2) If choosing slower film, you decide instead to increase the length of exposure beyond one second, you would run the risk of reciprocity failure and some unpredictable change in the color balance. I would choose neutral density filters.
Second, One of the best practices I learned in the darkroom is to change only one variable at a time. In this case, dealing with artwork shot on six different emulsions, I suggest that you perfect your technique with examples from only one of the slide films mentioned, before moving on to work with other emulsions. Even within images all shot on the same emulsion, you will find color balance variations, especially on those slides shot on E-6 film stock (Ektachrome/Agfachrome/Fujichrome) because E-6 slides fade faster than Kodachrome slides; older E-6 (and even more so, the E-4 process) are likely to have noticeable fading more than more recent E-6 slides.
The reason you are having greater difficulty with duping Kodachrome slides is because of their inherent higher contrast.
You might try an experiment with pre-flashing the unexposed Ektachome 5071 emulsion with a subliminal burst of light prior to duping the slides. The preflash technique builds a small increase in the base density of the film stock, so when it is used for duping high contrast originals, the contrast will be reduced in the dupe rather than being exaggerated. Here's a web page which gives you a starting point for the topic of pre-flashing.
(1) http://zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/archives/1998/msg01974.html
(2) http://astro.umsystem.edu/apml/ARCHIVES/MAY00/msg00914.html
(3) http://astro.umsystem.edu/apml/ARCHIVES/MAY00/msg00881.html
(4) http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=000oTH
The Native Indian/ Inuit Photographers' Association in Canada ( http://creative-spirit.com/facil.htm ) provides a Beseler deluxe dual mode slide duplicator to users of their darkroom, and you might query them as to their techniques and dichroic filter settings.
Hope this helps
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